2020 COTE Top Ten Winners

Winner: Library of Play

Nicole Andersson

Juror Comments

Library of Play shows us how to take a sustainable design concept and edit it down to the essential, excelling at all ten COTE measures. The striking buildings are convincingly presented, with floor plans that are designed  with clarity and efficiency. The scaling of the building reacts to the street presence and neighboring buildings. This project is a terrific example of how high performance  green building can be beautiful, simple and well-integrated.

Project Description
The Children’s Branch of the Bozeman Public Library acts as a set of flexible and non-flexible spaces, housing programs that promote playfulness, learning and creativity through the vehicle of toys and games. Largely catering to children and retired adults, the toys provide an opportunity for peer and intergenerational play. Like the objects that it collects, catalogues, stores, distributes and creates, the spaces within the library function to bring joy, lightness and a sense of entertainment to the community; the building itself also being like a ‘toy’ that can be assembled and reassembled as a form of creative expression. The Seed Bank and gardens dispersed throughout the Library provide another layer of activity and community collaboration.